Town shares concerns with USPS rep

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Last week, a representative from the United States Postal Service sat down with the Estes Park Mayor, Chief of Police and a concerned citizen about issues with the level of mail delivery service residents have been receiving.

Barbara Cole was there as a community representative. She raised issues like receiving bills that had come too late to be paid on time. On one instance, Cole said she only had three days to pay a bill that had been received a month late.

“I called the company and said ‘You have to understand, it’s our post office,'” Cole said. “And he said, ‘I know.’ So I guess he was familiar with Estes Park.”

Town officials at the meeting made it known to the representative that trust has been deteriorating amongst community members and the mail services. Wes Kufeld, Estes Park’s Chief of Police stated that his number one issue with Estes Park’s post office is security. He said his department hears complaints that come in all shapes and sizes daily.

“There is so much mail that is so critical and so important,” Kufeld said. “There are business owners that are shipping out products and receiving things that are high value, and some of these [items] are being misplaced or are gone.”

Kufeld said the issue is serious enough to be seen as a public safety issue. Mayor Todd Jirsa argued that the issue boils down to a systematic problem with the management within the Estes Park post office.

“It’s leadership,” Jirsa said. “It’s always leadership, and we can dance around the issue all we want, but people are talking … In customer service, everybody is so defensive and we want to make excuses about all of this.”

Jirsa said he has very little faith in the representative’s ability to make changes at the local level. He echoed Kufeld’s sense that the post office in Estes Park was working well until management changed roughly two years ago, and that he also receives complaints frequently.

“We deserve better service in this community then we’re getting right now,” he said.

Shareen Wertz, the post office representative, said that when there is a lot of staff turnover, gaps in training can occur, which she is intending to look into. These changes that have been raised will take time for people to see results. But what she believes she can do quickly is address misdeliveries.

“I believe in what the postal service is supposed to be doing,” she said. “We have a mission and we have a job that I believe wholeheartedly that it should be done and anybody that has the right to wear one of those shirts, if they’re not doing [their job] we need to know why.”

Wertz recommended that Estes Park residents sign up for informed delivery. This way, residents can view the address side of their mailed letters and track their packages.